Charles Loring Brace (1826-1890)

Charles Loring Brace

A minister and early
social work pioneer, and perhaps the best known
representative of nineteenth-century child rescue, Charles Loring
Brace was founder of the New York Childrens Aid Society in
1853 and author of The Best Method of Disposing of Our Pauper
and Vagrant Children (1859). What was the best method? The orphan
trains were Braces answer. Between 1854 and 1930, as many
as 200,000 children from New York and other Eastern cities were
sent by train to midwestern and western states as well as Canada
and Mexico. Brace was an evangelical reformer who wished to remove
the children of poor Catholics from crowded urban and family environments
and place them in Anglo-Protestant farming families in small towns
and rural areas. Brace and his peers considered Catholic parents
unworthy almost by definition, but the philosophy of child rescue
also emphasized nurture over nature. Malleable and innocent children,
if removed early enough from depraved parents, could escape the
inferior culture inherent in their homes and communities and become
upstanding citizens. Not surprisingly, an ideology that seemed benevolent
and humanitarian to many Protestants earned Brace a reputation in
Catholic communities as a child-stealer rather than a child-saver.
As a result, sectarian groups developed their own social services
and child-caring institutions, such as orphanages. In the late nineteenth
century, the Catholic church built institutions at a furious pace,
a sharp contrast with the trend toward placing-out
children. By 1910, there were 322 infant asylums and orphanages
serving almost 70,000 children annually.